Typically television programs or other media may begin after their corresponding scheduled broadcast times when, for example, a real-time event, such as a sporting event, runs late (i.e., beyond the scheduled broadcast time). Users recording the sporting event, that is running later than the scheduled time (e.g., as a result of overtime in a sporting event), may experience an early cut-off in the recording of that event. Furthermore, the sporting event that is running past its scheduled end time may be negatively impact a scheduled recording of an adjacent program, for example, because the scheduled recording timeslot of the adjacent program may not align with the actual start/end times of the adjacent program.
One approach has been to allow users to specify padding to account for such variation in start times and end times when recording programs. This approach is deficient, however, in that the user is burdened with playing back segments of adjacent programs recorded as a result of the padding when attempting to access the recorded program. In addition, users that fail to provide the right amount of padding may cause either waste recording time (and thereby waste of storage space) due to over-padding or a cut-off in the desired recording due to under-padding.